


Whatever Brings Us Together

by literarypeachtea



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Destiny, Gen, Industrial Revolution, Reincarnation, Soulmates, World War II, also this is unbeta'd kind of...drivel?, spoilers for s01e16 shuttlepod one, spoilers for s03e23 countdown, spoilers for s04e012 babel one, spoilers for s04e13 united, spoilers for s04e14 the aenar, whatever you want to call it I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24890830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literarypeachtea/pseuds/literarypeachtea
Summary: Reincarnation. Soul mates. Collective memory. All of these concepts have a common thread of, well, a common thread across generations.The crew of NX-01 Enterprise isn’t just a group thrown together by chance. Some people are simply destined to be in each other‘s lives, in every incarnation, no matter how it comes about. Call it fate, call it coincidence, call it a cosmic joke. But this crew is special, and time is relative.This is a collection of short standalone pieces exploring the idea. I'm going to reference all seasons, so those who haven't finished the series, beware.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. A Debt Repaid

When the fog from the Xindi parasites cleared, they told her.   
Lieutenant Reed apologized for interrupting her lunch, offered to come back when she had finished, but she’d seen the look on his face.   
She knew that look.  
She hadn’t been close with Major Hayes, not by a long shot.   
But still, when Reed informed her of the MACO’s death, the news hit like a wave — knocking the wind out of her, and she wasn’t quite sure why.

***

Her family owned a shop on a busy street.   
She’d watch out the window as they restocked canned goods, one eye on the children playing in the street and scattering at the sound of the noisy automobiles.   
The littlest child — too old to be at his mother’s breast, yet still too young to work in the factories — was seldom under the watchful eye of his older siblings, and therefore contented himself with splashing in the puddles or drawing in the dirt. He was slow to respond to his name being called, and loud noises didn’t seem to phase him. This led to a couple close calls with men driving carriages, but they’d been able to stop their horses in time before the child was trampled.  
She worried about him in the way she worried about everyone.   
Then, one day, when that ghastly thing came speeding around the corner, he was still there, in the middle of the road, drawing in the dirt. She had been in front of the store, arranging the produce they had for sale, when she saw it happen.   
The driver, unfamiliar with the new machinery, had taken the turn too sharply, and the mass of metal and rubber and glass flipped, and flipped, and flipped.   
She leaped into the road, pushing the child out of the way as the automobile continued its path of destruction, skidding to a stop.  
She was wracked with pain, but was able to open her eyes long enough to see the child, crying but safe. An apple, dislodged from her hand when the twisted metal careened into her, rolled into the gutter beside the boy.   
He was safe, and that was all that mattered as the darkness closed in on her. 

***

As she watched the apple roll across the floor after it slid from her fingers, Hoshi Sato almost felt as if the universe shifted back into balance.   
A debt had been repaid.


	2. Brothers in arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of what spurred the whole project — research into my own family and involvement in WWII, thinking about a WWII AU. I may yet still write that but this brief foray is enough for now.

Despite the cold exterior and paranoia at every unknown entity, Trip mused, Malcolm Reed was probably the best person to have on your side when going into a dangerous situation.  
Without knowing why, the engineer had felt that from the first day they set out into space. Sure, Trip trusted Jon with his life, but he knew implicitly Malcolm would always have his back. 

***

Being a poor young man in early 1941, enlisting had seemed like the best idea. It was that or follow his father to the coal mines in their West Virginia town. He was lucky enough that he could finish high school.  
The young American doubted he’d see combat. Then Pearl Harbor was bombed and the U.S. was pulled into the war.  
He’d joined the United States Army Air Force, where he became a flight engineer before he was sent “somewhere in England” to a Royal Air Force station.  
Once he got over culture shock, it wasn’t too bad, though the chow couldn’t compare to the stuff at home and the cloud cover often made bombing missions difficult.  
He even made friends with some of the British soldiers they shared the station with, taking a particular shine to a young man a little older than him. They’d go out to the local pub together, drinking and trading stories of home.   
Despite the RAF officer’s quiet demeanor and slight frame, he could hold his own with the biggest local men, often intervening when things got out of hand, particularly when the AAF engineer had enjoyed a bit too much ale.  
What the British soldier did, the American wasn’t quite sure, but he got the feeling the man knew more than he let on.  
Despite his pestering, the man wouldn’t give the flight engineer a straight answer as to what he did. The only time the American got a glimmer of what his friend did was during one of their regular trips to the pub. That night, the Brit was particularly reserved, seemingly deep in thought as he drained his glass. The young man didn’t mind — he could talk enough for the both of them.  
At some point, the other broke his silence.  
“If you knew someone’s next mission would be their last, would you tell them?”  
The American squinted at his companion. “The hell you talkin’ about?”  
“I’m saying, if I knew that milk run you’re set to go on tomorrow is doomed, would you want to know?”  
“Sir, if ya know somethin’, ya better tell my superiors.”  
The Brit stared into the foam of the fresh pint, as if trying to divine an answer from the beer.   
“They know.” Blue-gray eyes locked onto the American’s face. “They’re sending you into an ambush,” he added, voice low. “Be on guard over Caen.”  
He’d been right, of course. The anti-aircraft fire was heavy and accurate over the small French town, but his crew was able to avoid it. Another plane in the group took heavy damage, burning as it fell. A fellow flight engineer, another coal miner’s son, was part of the crew that went down with it. 

***  
On Shuttlepod One, on that Romulan nautilus… The rule-following Malcolm may occasionally be insubordinate, but it was always for good reason.  
Trip wasn’t sure if he believed in past lives or reincarnation or all the mumbo-jumbo — as an engineer, he prided himself on his objectivity, on not believing in ghosts and the supernatural. But he had to admit there was something familiar, a sense of deja vu, even the first time he and the Englishman sat down for a pint after a particularly long shift.  
Yes, he could trust his brother in arms, no matter what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In memoriam S.A.K.


End file.
